A Follow-Up After Christmas

For the past 27 years, Albuquerque's La Cueva High School has had a regular charity collection designed to give poor young children something they could not otherwise have — teddy bears. The collection was expressed as a pink artificial tree on which the donated teddy bears were hung as the tree's only decorations. The students and the broader community supported this charity.

But someone didn't. One man unconnected to the school, claiming to be acting on behalf of one parent, complained. He claimed the pink tree was a Christian symbol that excluded and marginalized non-Christian students, and that as a Christian symbol [really?!?] it was not Constitutionally permissible.

A school district administrator caved immediately and ordered the tree and teddy bears removed. The community responded by placing new trees and teddy bears almost daily until the school let out for its winter break. They were all quickly removed, of course, all excluded for not being inclusive enough.

The school administration subsequently decided it erred in so precipitously ordering the tree's removal.

Exclusion in the name of inclusion. That's just the kind of thing that's been showing up in the news a lot recently. Just think about Black Lives Matter, which is so inclusive that it quickly started getting people fired for saying all lives matter. Similar self-contradictory concepts have been showing up on college campuses, too, where they have been brewing for a long time.

For almost 50 years universities have adopted racialist policies in the name of equality, repressive speech codes in the name of tolerance, ideological orthodoxy in the name of intellectual freedom. Sooner or later, Orwellian methods will lead to Orwellian outcomes. Those coddled, bullying undergrads shouting their demands for safer spaces, easier classes, and additional racial set-asides are exactly what the campus faculty and administrators deserve.

As a result, and as that article notes, "In three generations, the campuses have moved from indulgent liberalism to destructive radicalism to the raised-fist racialism of the present."

And now there's one more example of exclusion in the name of inclusion — from another campus, of course.

When you say “merry Christmas” or “happy Chanukah,” you’re not being “inclusive” enough, according to [University of Central Florida professor Terri Susan] Fine. “I would suggest that we take a new approach that observes ‘the holidays’ we all have on our calendars, no matter our religion,” she wrote. My friends and I wish each other a ‘Happy Federal Holiday.’”

So, tell me, exactly what federal holiday were we just celebrating? This is an idea so dumb only an intellectual could believe it.